Samarkand is the second-largest city of Uzbekistan and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities on Earth — a city of 550,000 on the Zerafshan River in the fertile valley between the Kyzylkum Desert and the Pamir Mountains, 270 km southwest of Tashkent. Samarkand is 2,750 years old by scholarly consensus (founded c. 700 BC as Afrasiab, the Sogdian capital) and has been one of the great cities of human civilisation — Alexander the Great conquered it in 329 BC and called it the most beautiful city he had ever seen ("it is indeed as beautiful as I had imagined, but I cannot believe that it is so large and populous as they say" — his only recorded admission that reality exceeded expectation); Samarkand was the capital of the Timurid Empire (1370-1507) under Timur (Tamerlane) and his successor Ulugh Beg — the empire that produced the greatest concentration of Persian-Islamic architecture in history and brought Samarkand to the peak of its cultural power as the largest city in Asia west of China. The three monuments that define Samarkand are: the Registan (the 15th-17th century mosque-madrasa complex — three Timurid/Shaybanid buildings around a single square, the most magnificent civic space in Islamic architecture, whose tile mosaics of deep cobalt, turquoise, gold and white are the finest in the world), the Gur-e-Amir (the mausoleum of Timur, 1404, with its ribbed melon dome in turquoise — the prototype for the Taj Mahal; when Soviet archaeologists opened Timur's tomb in June 1941, a supposed curse warned of a great war; two days later, Germany invaded the Soviet Union), and the Shah-i-Zinda (the necropolis of 11 mausoleums from the 11th-15th centuries — the most intensely tiled street of tombs in the world, with the finest individual tile panels in Central Asia). Samarkand is a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001.
The Registan (Uzbek/Persian: sandy place — the public square of Timurid Samarkand) is the definitive monument of Islamic Central Asian architecture — three madrasas (Islamic colleges) surround the square: the Ulugh Beg Madrasa (1420, built by Timur's astronomer-grandson, with the finest entrance portal mosaic in Samarkand, the stars-and-stripes geometrical tile pattern that inspired Uzbek graphic identity); the Sher-Dor Madrasa (1636, the Lions Madrasa — scandalously depicting lions/tigers chasing deer and human-faced suns in its tympana, explicitly forbidden in orthodox Islamic art); and the Tillya-Kori Madrasa (1660, interior dome gilded in real gold leaf — kori means "gold-plated" in Uzbek); visiting at dawn (open from 8am) before the tour groups arrive.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Gur-e-Amir (Tomb of the Ruler, 1404, Samarkand) — the mausoleum of Timur/Tamerlane and the Timurid dynasty — has the ribbed melon dome (40 m high, covered in original 15th-century turquoise tilework over a drum of Kufic inscriptions) that directly inspired the Taj Mahal in Agra (which was built by Timur's great-great-great-grandson Shah Jahan in 1631-1648 for his wife Mumtaz Mahal); inside, Timur's cenotaph of dark green jade (the largest piece of jade in the world used for a sepulchral monument, cracked by Timur's own successor Ulugh Beg in an act of hubris; the real tomb is below in a crypt); the story of the 1941 Soviet excavation, the inscription "whoever opens my tomb will unleash an invader more fearsome than I" and the German invasion 48 hours later.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Bibi-Khanym Mosque (1399-1404, Timur's great Friday mosque — intended to be the largest mosque in the Islamic world, commissioned as a gift to his senior wife Saray Mulk Khanym after his Indian campaign; the main dome was 41 m high, larger than the Dome of the Rock; Timur was so obsessed with its completion that he allegedly threw meat and gold coins from the scaffolding to speed the workers; the construction was so rushed that the dome was cracking within a generation; the 1966 Tashkent earthquake collapsed it completely; now fully restored) and the adjacent market square where the mulberry trees shade the tea houses and the plov vendors.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Siab Bazaar (the permanent market adjacent to the Bibi-Khanym mosque, a market that has operated continuously in this location for over 2,000 years — the central market of Sogdiana, of Greek Marakanda, of Timurid Samarkand) sells samsa (clay oven lamb pastries), lepyoshka bread (the round Uzbek flatbread baked on the clay walls of the tandoor oven), dried fruit and nuts (dried apricots, figs, walnuts, pistachios and the famous Samarkand non bread with its elaborate crust patterns); then plov (the Samarkand plov — the Uzbek national dish: rice simmered in lamb fat with carrots, onion and cumin, with chunks of lamb and a quail egg on top — Samarkand plov differs from Tashkent plov by using yellow carrots and a lighter technique) at the plov centres.
Shah-i-Zinda (the Living King — the necropolis of 11 consecutive mausoleum-lined lanes on the edge of the ancient Afrasiab hill, 14th-15th century Timurid, with some earlier tombs from the 11th century) is the most visually overwhelming site in Samarkand — a single pedestrian lane between two rows of mausoleum facades, every surface covered in the finest mosaic tilework in Central Asia: star-pattern geometric mosaics, arabesque vine scrolls, Kufic and Thuluth calligraphy in cobalt, turquoise, white, terracotta and gold; the individual panels of the Tuman Aka Mausoleum (1405) and the Shadi Mulk Aqa Mausoleum (1372) are the finest tile panels in the Islamic world outside Iran.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Afrasiab Museum (on the hill of ancient Afrasiab, the original 7th century BC Sogdian city destroyed by Genghis Khan in 1220 — the Mongol destruction was so total that the city was never rebuilt on its original site and the modern Samarkand occupies a different location to the south) has the extraordinary Afrasiab frescoes (7th century AD, the finest surviving pre-Islamic Sogdian wall paintings in Central Asia — the ambassadors' fresco shows delegations from China, India, Korea and Byzantium bringing gifts to the Sogdian king Varkhuman; the Chinese delegation on painted horse at eye-level is one of the finest images of 7th-century Silk Road diplomacy).
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Ulugh Beg Observatory (founded 1424-1428, destroyed 1449 when religious conservatives had Ulugh Beg assassinated for prioritising astronomy over Islamic orthodoxy; rediscovered 1908 by Russian archaeologist Vyatkin; now partially restored) was the greatest observatory in the pre-telescopic world — Ulugh Beg's star catalogue (1437, with 1018 stars measured to an accuracy of seconds of arc, not bettered until Tycho Brahe 150 years later) and his calculation of the length of the solar year (365 days, 6 hours, 10 minutes and 8 seconds — accurate to within 58 seconds of modern measurements) were the pinnacle of medieval astronomy; the surviving 11 m section of the circular underground sextant rail is visible in the excavated trench.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Registan at sunset and dusk is the defining Samarkand experience — the three madrasa facades turn from turquoise-blue to gold-orange in the horizontal light, then to deep indigo as the sky darkens; the evening Sound-and-Light Show (May-September, 21:00, Uzbek narration with subtitles) projects Timurid history onto the three facades using the mosaic surfaces as projection screens; the Registan tea houses (the porticoed stalls within the courtyards of each madrasa that now serve green tea and silk products) are the finest place to watch the light change.
Shakhrisabz (the Green City, 90 km south of Samarkand, accessible by taxi or shared taxi through the Tashkentariq Pass) is the birthplace of Timur (born 1336 in the village of Khoja Ilgar, near modern Shakhrisabz) and the site of the Ak-Saray Palace (the White Palace, 1380-1404 — intended to be the most magnificent secular building in the world; the entrance portal at 65 m height was the tallest arch in the Islamic world; even after 600 years of earthquake damage and Soviet-era demolition, the two surviving towers of the entrance gateway still rise 38 m and the tile mosaic fragments are extraordinary); the historic Shakhrisabz is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Samarkand blue ceramic workshop tradition (the distinctive Samarkand/Rishtan blue-white-turquoise pottery style — based on 9th-century Persian underglaze painting techniques, using natural mineral pigments from lapis lazuli and cobalt; the masters paint freehand with no preliminary sketch using the same brushstroke vocabulary developed over 1,000 years) can be visited at the workshops of master ceramicists in the old city quarter near the Registan; the Samarkand silk weaving (ikat silk: the ado process where threads are tie-dyed before weaving to create the characteristic blurry multicolour pattern) at the Yodgorlik Silk Factory.
🎫 Book tickets via GetYourGuideThe Hazrat Khizr Mosque (the mosque on the hill above Shah-i-Zinda, traditionally marking the spot where the Islamic saint Khizr — the immortal green man of Islamic mysticism, associated with fresh water and eternal life — is said to have appeared; rebuilt in the 19th century in the Kokand style with painted columns and a painted iwan ceiling) has the finest panoramic view of Samarkand — the Bibi-Khanym dome, the Registan's three domes, the Shah-i-Zinda lane and the Afrasiab hill all visible simultaneously from the mosque terrace.
The farewell afternoon in Samarkand — the chaikhana (the traditional Central Asian tea house — carpeted wooden platforms over water channels or under mulberry trees; visitors sit cross-legged on the platform, a pot of green tea and a plate of dried fruits and nuts arrives, conversation begins; the fundamental social institution of Uzbek life) near the Siab Bazaar; shopping for the finest dried Samarkand apricots (the small, wrinkled, intensely flavoured kuraga dried apricot from the Zerafshan valley — a different species from the large Turkish ones — considered the finest dried apricot in the world) and the Samarkand non bread to carry home wrapped in cloth.